Tuesday, 29 June 2010

Filler Words: Part The First

I was once reading what I thought was an utterly awful novel. It was only when I got to page 14 and found the word "drugstore" that I realised that I wasn't reading stilted, rhythmless, English: I was reading very good American.

This, dear reader, is a problem. When you speak you have the advantage both of body and of accent. When you write you do not. Your words, which in your head were a ferocious rant or a bewitching drawl, on the page are lame, dull and denuded of voice.

This problem is also very easily solved. What you need are filler words. Every language has them.

I saw a good film last night.

I saw a jolly good film last night.

The first (although it might be informative and factual) is a dead sentence. The second tells you how to read it. It is as though the sentence came with an instruction booklet: the voice is British and posh. Moreover, having put that one word in the first sentence the reader will have got the idea and you may now continue ad infinitum and nauseam with your film review, safe and secure in the knowledge that your reader, whoever he, she or it happens to be, will be reading it in the voice that you intend.

Voice in literature is an infinitely complex and subtle business. Filler words cannot do the whole job, but they will do half of it and will do that work for No Effort Whatsoever on your part. If that American novel had simply used the word goddamned in the first sentence I would not have been tempted to throw it on the fire.

So, for your delight, instruction and edification here are some filler words, insertable almost anywhere, along with what I consider to be their implications:

[All English, unless otherwise stated. Most would go at the beginning of a sentence, especially those followed by a comma]

Therefore, necessarily, of course, obviously, you have to admit, so, it follows, logically = Male (because we love to delude ourselves by dressing in the clothes of logic)

Jesus mate, = Not an order to Our Lord that he should reproduce, but an Australianism

I would like to point out that = Prick

Frightfully = Posh

You know what? = ********in*

Anyway, = refreshing insofar as it does down everything you've just been saying. Infuriating for the same reason.

The interesting thing is = Then why didn't you cut the last bloody paragraph?

Intense(ly) = Passionate and (almost) intellectual

Rather = Chappish

Pretty = Middle-Class

Kind of = Hippy

, know what I mean? = Not necessarily

Now, dear reader, you may shudder at this requirement. You may feel that your voice is so godfuckdamned unique that no such filler word could ever do it justice. But remember that without them your voice may not be unique, it may simply be non-existent. Pick one. Go on.

Conversationally, I think. When writing Inky Fool I usually imagine. That's because someone I'm having a conversation with can tell by my demeanour that I'm a whimsical sort of fellow. A blog reader cannot, so I have to change my words. A voice can be infinitely modulated after you have set it up, but why not give your reader a clue as to what it is to be modulated from? Put a filler word in the first sentence. It is a courtesy. Then set to work on the fine tuning.

It's a jolly goddamned peach of a, like, idea.

Bonzer.

Of course these are just my own associations. Queries and contradictions in the comments, please. I think there will be further posts on exclamations and endearments, intensifiers and disapprobators. Suggestions welcome.

My own version of these fillers would certainly be an interesting read - I'm Australian. Starting my blog has caused me to realise that we do have turns of phrase unique to us, but they're not the ones that most people would think of. Some people do speak very 'stereotypicallly Aussie', though, usually those from the country. You won't hear things like 'grouse', 'Sheila' or even 'g'day' in the city. Thankfully!

This is one of those posts which makes me enormously self-conscious and want to comment at the same time. I mean, how do you define yourself as a language-loving over-educated Australian raised on English children's literature in one word? Apart from, I dunno, calling yourself The Antipodean. Only, then there are all these other well-read Australians commenting (apparently there are three of us) and you wonder if you should be, like, "One of the Antipodeans, the one that likes cricket and Shakespeare and men with lovely manners and dressing gowns" but that doesn't fit in the little box. And I am complicated, darling, if not unique, so instead I shall just politely suggest that you might mean 'your delight.'

Jade, I have said 'g'day' more than once in a metropolitan setting, albeit more often in a rural one. It's a good all-purpose greeting. So it doesn't sound as magnifique as 'bonjour' (what does random French mean, m'sieur?) but it's just as useful.

I think I need to stop now, before the post-modern, self-conscious, Ouroborosity of it all swallows me whole.

but how about dude! - I can just hear that voice in my head simply because my brother came from a 'dude!' student life.

Of course there's also 'darling! you must come and visit some time' (can't just hear her voice dripping), 'my dear woman / child / man'.

And then in South Africa we have 'eish' and 'leka', if anyone is interested, which they usually are not because not matter which way you use them, all our cultural fillers make people sound common. So we'll probably use the British fillers to denote class.

The Antipodean, considering &#39;Miss Podean&#39; but wonders if it could mean &#39;of the feet,&#39; and then if &#39;miss&#39; were misinterpreted what would people think? Anyway, she stopped wondering and5 July 2010 at 17:01

Well, Your Subconscious Highness, extensive research (and/or ten minutes on Google) reveals usage of 'Part The First' in the following:

Handel's Messiah (1741)Rights of Man (1791) by Thomas Paine"A catalogue of books (MDCCXCIII) Part the first, ... Which are this day selling" by John Egerton Evangeline (1847) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Battle of Life (1846) by Charles Dickens, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It would therefore appear to be of good provenance. Since I didn't put much more work into it than that, I'm not really sure whether Handel actually wrote 'Part the First' or that was added by a publisher or editor somewhere along the line. Mr Egerton, though, has it in his title, along with Roman numerals, so I think he should get bonus points.

My favourite book of this and possibly any other Christmas is Mark Forsyth's A Short History of Drunkenness - The Spectator

Sparkling, erudite and laugh out loud funny. Mark Forsyth is the kind of guide that drunks, teetotallers and light drinkers dream of to explain the ins and outs of alcohol use and abuse since the beginning of time. One of my books of the year. Immensely enjoyable. Professor Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

A Short History of Drunkenness is this year's Châteauneuf-du-Pape of Christmas books, no less. Bloody entertaining. - Emlyn Rees

Sometimes you see a book title that simply gladdens the heart. Everyone I showed this book to either smiled broadly or laughed out loud . . . This is a book of some brilliance - Daily Mail

With a great eye for a story and a counterintuitive argument, Mark Forsyth has enormous fun breezing through 10,000 years of alcoholic history in a little more than 250 pages. - The Guardian

Well researched and recounted with excellent humour, Forsyth's alcohol-ridden tale is sure to reduce anyone to a stupor of amazement. - Daily Express

This entertaining study of drunkenness makes for a racy sprint through human history - history being, as Mark Forsyth wittily puts it "the result of farmers working too hard". - The Sunday Times

This charming book proved so engrossing that while reading it I accidentally drank two bottles of wine without realising. - Rob Temple, author of Very British Problems

Taste the Elements of Eloquence

The Horologicon is out in America

The Horologicon is a book of the strangest and most beautiful words in the English language arranged by the hour of the day when you will really need them. Words for breakfast, for commuting, for working, for dining, for drinking and for getting lost on the way home. It runs from uhtceare (sadness before dawn) to curtain lecture (a telling off given by your spouse in bed). It's out all over the world and you can buy it from these lovely people: